1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to computers and more particularly to a computer evaluation system and method for evaluating computer products on a plurality of computer systems.
2. Related Art
Computers are widespread and vitally important to many types of enterprises including businesses, universities and government as well as for home and personal use. As demand continues to grow for computers, a wide variety of hardware computer products are constantly being developed. Before these newly developed computer products can be offered for sale, it is essential that they be evaluated on a variety of computer systems. This evaluation ensures that the new computer products are compatible and reliable with existing computer hardware and operating systems.
In order to perform this evaluation, computer manufacturers typically have large testing facilities used to evaluate new computer products. These testing facilities usually include multiple computer systems that are self-contained. Each self-contained computer system includes its own central processing unit (CPU) and computer peripherals (such as a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and a hard drive).
One problem with these types of testing facilities is that the computer peripherals are duplicated between computer systems. Thus, the testing facilities may contain several identical or similar monitors, keyboards and hard drives. This tends to make the testing facilities large and expensive because of the space and expense required to acquire, store and maintain multiple self-contained computer systems. In addition, the labor and maintenance costs of configuring the computer systems, installing and changing parts on all these computer systems, and the duplication of prototypes to test in different environments involves even greater expense.
Therefore what is needed is a computer evaluation system and method that eliminates redundant computer peripherals when evaluating new computer hardware products. What is also needed is a system and method for computer evaluation that requires a minimal amount of maintenance and avoids unnecessary duplication of computer peripherals. Moreover, what is further needed is an evaluation system and method that is efficient, low-cost and scalable to allow rapid evaluation of computer products with a wide variety of computer operating systems.